Why Flexing the “Customer’s Always Right” Muscle Isn’t Necessarily Good for Your Business

It’s a well-known fact that if you’re the customer, you’re always right. Right? Right. You may recall yourself thinking, “We’re paying you, and that translates into you need to do everything I ask for.” You may have felt happy when you heard your vendor tell you, ”No problem, anything you’d like!” This mindset is indeed a prolific mindset: the customer is always right and, therefore, vendors should always do as customers ask.

Vendors should deliver great service and value to their clients. There’s no question about that. But the problem with today’s mindset is that it takes a lot more than pleasant customer service and a willing-to-do-whatever attitude to create true, sustainable business partnerships. If we work from the premise that sustainable business partnerships (which are likely based on a fair exchange of value) are a sensible goal, then the “customer is always right” is a mindset we might want to question.

Your company likely has any of the vendors with whom you’re working because you need a certain know-how, expertise, capacity, or something else you may not have in-house. You select specific vendors deliberately based on one or more of those aspects, and you typically invest considerable resources with them over time.

What you put into your relationships with your vendors goes well beyond hard costs such as retainers, project pricing, implementation fees, and other monetary costs. Typically, you also invest significant time, brain power and human resources (sometimes at very senior levels) to scope and design your partnership, and then to establish and maintain these relationships.

Having a “customer’s always right” attitude and working with vendors who are not willing to challenge you, means you could miss out on the many benefits you could reap from their expertise. That ultimately devalues the relationship (and the expertise attached) that you’ve worked so hard to establish.

Without that true partnership, you’ll hear a senior leader saying something like, “What do these guys do for us? What are we getting out of them? Why are we even paying them?” or “They just don’t get it. All they do is ‘yes’ us and we’re not moving the needle.”

The cost of not creating a true partnership is simply too high. It’s in both your company’s and your own personal brand’s best interest to pick providers who have a true partnership approach mentality ingrained in their DNA, and who expect to work as a real extension of your team from the very start. A “yes” at the start of the engagement may feel really good, but if that’s all you get from your vendors, over time, you’ll be left without any true allies who’ll ultimately help drive your long-term success.

The Difference Between a True Business Partner and a Vendor: What They Will and Won’t Do

Obsessed with your success: A true business partner is one who’s absolutely obsessed with your success – they’re not simply interested in your dollars. They know mutual success is about long-term sustainability.

Honest and Direct: Good business partners won’t always say “yes.” They’re willing to be honest and direct. They’ll say “no” when you ask for something that won’t be in your best interest. And when they say “no,” they won’t simply stop there. Instead, they’ll share the rationale behind that “no” and find new, more impactful ways for you to achieve your goals.

Transparency: Real business partners won’t have a bunch of hidden fees, and they won’t nickel and dime you every time you ask for something. Instead, they’ll price fairly, competitively, and transparently so you can be sure your partnership is sustainable, on both sides. They’ll say “no” to additional dollars if those dollars won’t ultimately help you achieve your goals or drive a positive impact, or if what you want to put more dollars toward will actually work against your goals or hurt your business.

Challenging: It won’t always be comfortable to work with companies that act like true business partners. They’ll challenge your thinking so they can help you realize the best results possible. But they’ll always work with you to set clear expectations up front and manage those expectations throughout your engagement so they can wow you with near-impossible potential.

Will Your Partner Help You Be Successful?

To create collaborative and sustainable business partnerships with any of your vendors, it’s crucial to hold each other accountable for your mutual success.

Here are five key questions that’ll help you understand whether your partner is one who’ll ultimately help you achieve your goals:

Do you feel your partner would turn down additional dollars you’d be willing to spend if they thought those dollars wouldn’t produce a return or make a positive impact for your business?

Do you believe your partner will push back on you and they’re willing to say “no” when it’s in your best interest?

Do you and your partner have a shared set of metrics from which you both operate (for example, have you agreed on what the success of a particular project will look like, or have you established shared rules of engagement)?

Do you think your partner will honestly manage your expectations, even if you may not like what they have to tell you?

Do you believe your partner values your success and the success of your company over anything else?

It’s time to transform the “customer always right” mindset and shift away from a willing-to-do-whatever service model in order to form better business relationships. The cost of acquiring and providing business services is high, and in today’s always-on, do-more-with-less world, companies can’t afford to waste time or money on low-impact, unsustainable relationships. Companies have to make sure every new business relationship is designed to thrive from the start. If you’re struggling to make the most of your relationships, challenge your vendors to up their game. And up your own game by expecting and requiring them to act as true business partners, not simply vendors.

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Jonathan Novich

SVP of Product and Salesforce

Jonathan Novich is SVP of Product and Salesforce for Bullhorn, the global leader in CRM and operations software for the recruitment industry. A staffing technology innovator, he has developed broad and deep product and technical experience consulting to staffing firms over the past 15 years. Jonathan has acted as an independent consultant for some of the largest staffing companies in the world and advised companies on acquisition targets.
At Bullhorn, he oversees product initiatives as more than 10,000 staffing companies rely on Bullhorn’s cloud-based platform to drive sales, build relationships, and power their recruitment processes from end to end. He graduated with honors from Princeton University, earning a Bachelor of Science in Engineering in Computer Science and a certificate in Operations Research.

Ed Holmes

SVP, Workforce & Revenue Cloud

As Bullhorn’s SVP of Workforce & Revenue Cloud, Ed drives the company’s middle office strategy and overall product offering. Ed joined Bullhorn as part of the Peoplenet acquisition where he spent 7 years as the President/CEO leading up to the acquisition in late 2017. Prior to joining the Bullhorn family, Ed has spent his career designing, building and managing technology solutions for numerous Fortune 500 companies. He has been a Partner in an ERP-focused consulting firm, a CIO for a global pharmaceutical company, a supply-chain leader for a retail company and the leader of a services company from its inception to $50MM in revenue. Ed was born in Florida but has spent the last 20+ years in Atlanta, GA. Ed loves to play golf, tennis and basketball and occasionally gets out kite boarding when the wind is just right.

Ed holds a Bachelor of Science in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and an MBA from Goizueta Business School at Emory University.

Brian Sylvester

CFO

Brian Sylvester is Bullhorn’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO) with more than 15 years of financial leadership experience. Brian leads Bullhorn’s financial, accounting, and legal functions. Prior to becoming CFO, Brian spent three years at Bullhorn in various finance & accounting roles. Prior to Bullhorn, Brian was Corporate Controller at Pegasystems, a global provider of business process management software where he scaled the finance organization during a period of 2.5x revenue growth. Brian began his career at PricewaterhouseCoopers in their technology audit practice.

Brian is a CPA in Massachusetts, has a Master’s of Science in Accounting from Boston College and a Bachelor’s of Science in Accounting from Bryant University.

Tamsyn Attiwell

SVP, Customer Success

As the Senior Vice President of Customer Success, Tamsyn leads Bullhorn’s Services and Customer Success teams. She is responsible for the successful delivery of all products and services globally and is committed to creating and maintaining incredible long-term customer experiences in the Candidate to Cash process. Tamsyn has been delivering implementations for over 25 years with companies such as SAP, Ariba, Zuora and Apttus: specializing in HR, Payroll, Procurement and Quote To Cash capability. She trained as a software engineer after studying Maths, Statistics, and Computing in England.

Art Papas

Founder & CEO

Art Papas is the Founder and CEO of Bullhorn, Inc, the global leader in software for the staffing & recruitment industry. Art was the original architect of Bullhorn’s flagship Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, which now helps more than 8,000 companies around the world run their businesses. Art is the Chairman of the Board at Career Collaborative, an organization that teaches unemployed and underemployed adults how to build careers that change lives and strengthen families. In 2014, Ernst & Young named Art an EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award Winner in New England. Prior to starting Bullhorn, Art started his career as a software engineer at Thomson Reuters. Art is a graduate of Tufts University, holding a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics.

Matt Fischer

President and Chief Technology Officer

As President and CTO, Matt leads Bullhorn’s architectural, technical, and software design and development efforts. He also directs the product management team’s work defining product strategy, and global customer support and success. Since joining Bullhorn in 2004, Matt has held a variety of leadership positions managing the growth of various technical and services teams, including Vice President of Professional Services. Prior to Bullhorn, Matt worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers, specializing in systems process assurance for such companies as Fidelity and State Street Global Advisors. Matt holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with a concentration in Finance from Boston University’s School of Management.

Mike Restivo

Chief Revenue Officer

As Bullhorn’s Chief Revenue Officer, Mike drives the company’s global revenue growth. Mike was one of the first 15 team members of Bullhorn Inc. in Boston and relocated to London in 2010 to start up the International team. In his 6 years in London, Mike drove regional expansion into the Netherlands, Germany, Singapore, and Australia. He has supplied cloud-based solutions to recruitment consultancies in over 50 different countries worldwide for the past 10 years. Mike was born and raised in the Boston-area where he grew up an avid sport fan. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Business Management from Babson College.

Kristin Machacek Leary

Chief People Officer

Kristin oversees Bullhorn’s human resources function in her role as Chief People Officer. Kristin joined Bullhorn in 2020 and is responsible for helping Bullhorn scale to the next level, build leadership capacity, and accelerate growth in global markets. Kristin brings to the role over 20 years of experience leading high-potential companies through breakthrough growth and brings a depth of knowledge in organizational design, scalable processes, and flexible systems culled from some of the most successful global companies in the world. Leary joins Bullhorn from Hitachi Vantara, where she served as Chief Human Resources Officer, and before that she worked as Chief Human Resources Officer at Forcepoint, a private equity-backed company with 3,000 employees operating in more than 45 countries. She has also worked at high-growth enterprise technology companies like Alphatec Spine, Boston Scientific, and Hewlett-Packard.

Peter Linas

Executive Vice President of Corporate Development and International

Peter oversees Bullhorn’s international operations across EMEA and APAC in his role as Executive Vice President of Corporate Development and International. Peter joined Bullhorn in 2009 and was responsible for its highly successful UK launch. In addition to growing the international team to over 50 staff and establishing Bullhorn as the UK’s market leading recruitment software in fewer than three years, Peter has expanded Bullhorn’s reach into EMEA and APAC and achieved a user base of more than 10,000 international users. Prior to taking on the launch of Bullhorn in the UK, Peter spent 20 years working in the recruitment industry and held a number of senior director roles before moving into the technology space.

Ryan Murphy

Executive Vice President of Enterprise and Salesforce

Ryan Murphy is the Executive Vice President of Enterprise and Salesforce. He began his 10-year career at Bullhorn as a finance and sales intern, affording him a 360-degree view of the software-as-a-service industry and Bullhorn’s business model. Prior to his current role, Ryan served as an Enterprise Account Executive where he honed his customer-first leadership style and championed Bullhorn’s offerings to its most strategic clients. Today, Murphy is charged with leading the enterprise strategy and go to market for both Bullhorn and Bullhorn for Salesforce, enabling customers to maximize their investments on both platforms and deliver an incredible experience to their customers and candidates. Ryan has a Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration from Boston University.